Pages

Thursday, 17 March 2016

Puzzle Quiet Book Page Swap

I recently went in a quiet book swap with a group on Facebook.

We each made seven copies of our own page and sent them to the host. She sent us back one of our own pages, and six different pages made by the other participants. It is a great way to build a quiet book. You only have to think about one page layout so it saves on supplies and effort.

With not a lot of time before Christmas, this was meant to be a quick and easy basic swap. The theme was puzzles, and the size of the pages was reduced to 8"x8", which makes it an ideal book for occupying the little ones while travelling.

This is the page I contributed:

It is a themed button maze - there are a couple of mobs of sheep in a bunch of paddocks. The gates can be opened and shut, and the sheep can be fed on a lush pasture of clover or a pile of hay, and you can bark at them while you do it all - whatever your imagination can muster.

I drew out where I wanted fences on a piece of paper so I could organize the paddock layout in my head. After sewing the buttons under a piece of tulle, I laid strips of rik rak down for the fences and sewed them down, leaving it open where the gates were to go. Cut the rik rak where the gates go and melt the ends with a match to stop it unraveling.

Done!

One of the other pages contributed was an entirely hand sewn Little Bo Peep - now that is dedication! One sheep is detatchable with velcro, and you can trace over the different paths to find which one leads home.

Our swap host made a cupcake puzzle and pocket. The pocket was made by laying two pieces of fabric over each other, turning the top edge of the top one down and adding a piece of velco to each respective side, then stitching around the three edges of the top layer of fabric - I loved the idea because it was really easy!

There were three tangram pages done in this swap. They were all made with an embroidery machine. This first one is of a rabbit. The theme went great with this bunny material I had, so I made a pocket for the pieces like the one made for the cupcake. Unfortunately I forgot to get a photo of this page with the pieces laid on it before it got given to it's new owner...

The next tangram puzzle was of a cute little house.

And the last tangram puzzle was of a horse. I love the colours chosen for this page. It came with it's own pocket built into the page by sewing down three edges of the horse tangram outline which had been embroidered onto felt.

Again, layer two squares of fabric over the top of each other, right sides facing up. She cut an 'x' shaped opening in the middle of the top square of fabric and folded back the edges on them. Folding them back on themselves several times is a good idea to avoid them getting in the way when trying to find items. Then she inserted a smaller square of clear vinyl underneath, sewing around the inside edge, and zig zaging around the outer edges. She used her machine to do the 'Find 10 Things' lettering at the top. Next, she sewed the two squares of fabric together leaving a 1" gap around the edges to allow for binding, as well as a small opening so she could fill the space between them with ten small items and bean bag beans. She was going to use rice, but since we had to post the pages to the host and back, she decided bean bag beans would be a lighter and therefore cheaper option.

The ten items in our I-Spy page are a small plastic baby, a flower button, a Lego block, a wooden leaf picture, a wooden drum picture, a small wooden painted peg, a small glitter button, a wooden cat head picture, a wooden number '2', and a large google eye. In other versions, she has included small plastic bugs and animals. Small shells, gum-nuts, beads, paper clips, and any small, non-sharp household items would also work well.